Somnium, revised and expanded edition [9781907222511]

Overview

Written in the early years of the twenty-first century, when the author was engaged in dream-explorations and mystical practices centered on the Greek Moon goddess Selene, Somnium is an intensely personal fictional tapestry that weaves together numerous historical and stylistic variations on the enduring myth of Selene and Endymion. Ranging through the sixteenth to twenty-first centuries, it combines medieval, Elizabethan, Gothic, and Decadent elements in a fantastic romance of rare imagination.

With its delirious and heartbroken narrative, Somnium is an extraordinary odyssey through love, loss, and lunacy, illuminated by the silvery moonlight of its exquisite language.

Alan Moore's afterword details the life of his friend and mentor Steve Moore, and includes the circumstances surrounding the writing of Somnium.

This new expanded paperback edition includes Sketches of Shooter's Hill, a topographical communiqué from the South London hinterlands that formed the liminal setting for Moore's novel. Originally self-published by the author and distributed only to a handful of friends, this curious travelogue is made available to readers here for the first time.

“A masterpiece.”
—Alan Moore

“A unique work by a unique genius. Moore has an understanding of the occult peculiar to a very few and it always gives me the shivers; the shivers which say 'authenticity.' Get this book while you're part of the minority who know about it.”—Michael Moorcock

“A visionary decrypting of one of fringe-London's most potent downriver sites. Steve Moore's voyage through plural strands of time echoes the high craft of his namesake, Alan, and the honourable tradition of Michael Moorcock's Gloriana.”
—Iain Sinclair